We use free and open source software and find it very useful. Our
intranet uses MySQL [1] and PHP [2] to provide dynamic web sites. One of
these sites uses DokuWiki [3] for network documentation. I use Python
[4] to write system administration scripts. The web sites and Python
scripts are written using the SciTE [5] text editor. I make extensive
use of xVNC [6] for remote administration of workstations. Both myself
and my users appreciate the ability to quickly take over control of a
workstation, either to fix a problem, or to show a user how to
accomplish a task.

We have installed Firefox [7] as our default web browser. The tabbed
browsing is especially useful, since users can have several tabs open
for different sites on the intranet, giving them quick and easy access
to essential information. It is useful for us to be able to create PDF
files to send to clients, and for this we use PDFCreator [8]. This
installs as a printer driver, which means that creating a PDF is as
simple as printing a document.

All of the free and open source software that we use is reliable and
easy to use. The licensing makes administration much simpler than with
proprietary software, since we can install the software on any computer
that needs it, with no concerns about having to buy extra licenses, or
keep records of how many licenses we have bought.

I work as a Clinical Informatics Analyst at the Children's Hospitals and
Clinics of Minnesota located in the twin cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul.
In the past two years, I have developed a Disease Outbreak Detection
System at our pediatric health-care organization using three free
products: GNU/Linux, Perl, and R (the statistical programming language).
The system (a Syndromic Surveillance System that was developed as part
of national bio-surveillance initiatives) analyzes daily patient data
from our clinical information system in order
to detect disease outbreaks. Our system has proved to be extraordinarily
stable, fast, and effective. We also collaborate with the Minnesota
Department of Health on this project and send them the results from the
system everyday.

Sivakumaran Raman, MBBS, MS

To do my scientific research without free software is absolutely
unthinkable. I work in scientific computing, and make substantial use of
task farms and beowulf clusters as a compute resource, on a daily basis.
The reliability, stability and security of linux is absolutely vital in
this instance. Furthermore, the availability of associated software such
as gcc, the gimp, xmakemol, xmgrace and xdrawchem (just to name a few) is
something I completely depend on. As for emacs, I use this software
every day and I believe it helps me to work as efficiently as possible.

Research in scientific computing owes a lot to free software!

Dr. Tiff Walsh
Dept. of Chemistry
Centre for Scientific Computing

I've been working as a programmer and teacher for almost 10 years, and
over these period, my work has become more and more dependant of Free
Software. In my first professional years, virtually all software used
by my employers was proprietary, but since about 5 years ago a trend
towards using FS solutions began and has consolidated to the point
that, for a long time now, I use almost exclusively FS at my jobs.
I've programmed web applications [1], state-of-the-art electronic
voting systems [2] and, right now, satellite control systems for
scientific missions [3] using exclusively free software.

When it comes to software development, the GNU tools (Emacs, gcc, gdb,
autotools, make, etc., etc.) have, in my experience, no competitor in
terms of flexibility, reliability and, for those willing to learn,
usability. And the swiftness, amount and quality of community-based
help and support is far better, in my experience, than any offered by
proprietary solutions.

In my current job [3], I am also witnessing the consolidation of FS in
an area traditionally dominated by closed solutions: safety-critical,
embedded systems. A few years ago, using a real-time OS meant buying
some of the expensive and closed commercial ones which where certified
by contractors such as civil aviation, ESA or NASA. Now, we're using
RTEMS, a GPL real-time kernel, so that our whole tool chain is free
and our contractor (ESA) is happy with it. Of course, in
mission-critical products, having access to the source code is almost
a necessity: with our all-GPL solutions we have it for free, both as
in beer and, most importantly, as in speech.

I would never work again for a company which uses non-free tools.

Finally, I've also spent a couple of years in the academia. Of course,
everything in there was free: we were doing science, after all, and we
would never use closed solutions in our research. But also for our
teaching: laboratories in our faculty [4] used (and still use)
computers with GNU/Linux as their only OS, and we encouraged our
students to learn and use this kind of systems for their
assignments. Our systems administrators, who have to maintain a
considerably sized network, are also empowered by predictable, robust
and enjoyable tools, which make their job easier and more fun. A
win-win-win situation!

When I began programming seriously, I realized that I would need some
way to easily and efficiently develop my programs. I remember
thinking surely any such collection of software would be several
hundred dollars at least. Although I did discover that there were
development suites available at that price, I discovered an affordable
alternative. gcc and gnu make were affordable (obviously), but what I
discovered was how powerful they truly were. Now I couldn't imagine
developing without these tools.

Free software is vital to the education of programmers; without the
freely available tools, I would have never learned how to develop
programs myself, and it is certainly an invaluable resource at my
college. Free software makes accessible those tools formerly
restricted only to the wealthy and the pirate.

Colin Williams
Hendrix College
lackita@gmail.com

I work as a regional network administrator for a Fortune 500
company. When I began with the company a year and a half ago, we were
a 100% windows based enterprise. During a Peoplesoft project launch,
we had some very serious issues with the implementation, and no one
could pinpoint the cause.

I was asked to setup a NOC with 2 days notice. I quickly got a retired
server up a running with a functional Ubuntu install in less than 6
minutes. Using nagios, MRTG, etherape, etheral, and other GPL'd tools,
I was able to meet my deadline and begin addressing the issues
immediately.

Coincidentally, my free NOC was an order of magnitude more accurate
than our enterprise level Solarwinds monitoring, provided by a 3rd
party NOC service.

With the success of the GNU/Linux based NOC, we are now implementing
Linux citrix thin clients in the field, bringing to life machines so
old, they could not be declared assets on our company's financial
statements, and having them out preform the full-install windows
machines we had been using.

Mark

I use GNU software almost exclusively for my embedded applications,
and have done so for nearly a decade. (The lone holdout is a legacy
application that will be migrated to a GNU-compatible platform
shortly). None of the commercial alternatives I have encountered in
my career could compete with the flexibility, stability and
transparency that comes standard with GNU tools.

One project I recently worked on required a complex floating-point
calculation to be performed on an integer-only, gcc-compatible
microprocessor. Changing processors was not an option. After a few
hours with gdb and the source code for gcc's floating-point
implementation, I was able to easily identify and isolate hotspots in
my algorithm. With some minor refinements to that source code to take
advantage of the fact that I didn't need the full 64-bit precision
offered by gcc, I was able to reduce the time of one iteration of my
calculation from 5 minutes to well under the ten seconds demanded by
the customer--- without modifying the source code for the algorithm
itself. (The project was ultimately terminated due to unexpected
destruction of the target platform: the Mir Space Station).

Another project required compatibility with an external debugger, but
the target hardware did not provide a JTAG or any other traditional
access ports to communicate with the debugging host. To make matters
worse, there were parts of the application that had to continue
operating even if the rest of the code was halted due to an exception
or breakpoint. Using existing documentation for the GNU debugger's
Remote Serial Protocol, I was able to craft a gdb-compatible debugging
agent that could step machine instructions, set breakpoints and
observe/manipulate data values in my embedded application without
destructively interfering with the critical, always-on parts of that
application. As if that wasn't enough, I was also able to leverage
the powerful scripting and logging abilities of the GNU debugger to
build extensive, cross-platform, automated unit and system tests that
significantly improved the quality of the delivered software. The
source code for that project ultimately became the "gdbstubs" project,
now hosted on SourceForge.

The GNU/Linux operating system running on my workstation hosts gcc and
other development tools just fine, but the real action in my book
comes when you use GNU tools and technologies to produce interesting
and powerful embedded applications.

Bill Gatliff
Independent Embedded Consultant
bgat@billgatliff.com

As a freelance writer who is at present entirely focused on the
homeless and the hungry both here in America and in other countries
and remote parts of the world, free software is one of my main tools
for research, acquiring information, and organization. It is good that
the software is free as the job tends to not pay a whole lot you might
say. The ability to communicate with others, sharing information, and
making contacts would not be as beneficial to the end goal were it
that I was required to pay exhorbitant amounts of greenbacks while
conducting extensive research.

Were it the case that I had no other choice, I would have spent at
least 200 or more on operating system licenses and word editing
software. The choice of free software means that those 200 can go to
something else, perhaps as a donation to a food kitchen. In this
respect, the donation of the programmers time has yielded yet another
contribution.

In a email from an Australian customer with a (GNU) Redhat Linux
(Fedora 3) server:

Subject: International Email

Hi Richard,

Just some feedback for you – the squirrel mail solution worked
splendidly for me. The hotels I stayed in while in India and Singapore
had wireless pay-as-you-go Internet access available, so I could sit
in my room in the evenings and catch up on all my mail. The squirrel
mail facility is very fast so I was very happy.